Rick Holmes: Christian exodus from Middle East part of sad Bush legacy

Tuesday

Jul 24, 2007 at 12:01 AMJul 24, 2007 at 9:06 AM

Whatever his intent, the Christian exodus from the Middle East is a tragic part of George W. Bush's sad legacy, one that will haunt the Holy Land for many years to come.

By Rick Holmes

George W. Bush made it to the White House as the candidate of the Christian right, people for whom the Middle East is less a subject of foreign policy than a matter of scripture, history and prophesy.

Since then, what has happened to Christians in the Holy Land is a modern tragedy.
Not long ago, Lebanon was the only majority Christian country in the Middle East, Newsweek reports. Now it is two-thirds Muslim.

Coptic Christians, who trace their history back to Mary's escape following the crucifixion of Jesus, have dropped from 10 percent of Egypt's population to 6 percent.

Only 12,000 Christians remain in Jerusalem, Newsweek says, and the Greek Orthodox archbishop is pleading with his flock not to leave.

Bethlehem, where Christianity was born, was 85 percent Christian not long ago. Now Christians comprise just 20 percent of the population.

The World Council of Churches estimates that the population of Christians in the Middle East has shrunk from 12 million to 2 million in the last decade, a huge shift in a part of the world where Christian communities have persevered for 2,000 years.

Nowhere has the change been as brutal as in Iraq, which before the war had an estimated 1.2 million Christians - out of a total population of 25 million. Well over half have now left the country, Newsweek says, with most of the rest driven from their homes to safer parts of Iraq. Caritas, the Roman Catholic relief organization, estimates that the Christian population had fallen to 12,000 by last year.

Christians aren't just being exiled from Iraq; they are being murdered. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., told columnist George Will about a soldier he met during a recent trip to Iraq. The soldier had been working with an Iraqi army officer charged with training police cadets.

Then the Iraqi cadets discovered the Iraqi officer training them was a Christian. They stoned him to death.

We can't blame George W. Bush for that, can we? The intolerance of Islamic militants, the beheadings, the ethnic cleansing going on in Baghdad neighborhoods, the hundreds of bodies found on Iraq's streets every morning marked by torture of the most brutal sort - those are the work of Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. American troops are patrolling Iraq to stop sectarian violence, not to foment it.

True enough, but it was Bush who went out of his way to stir up this hornets nest.
Months before the attacks of 9/11, Bush abandoned the role of honest broker in the Middle East, siding publicly with Israel in its clash with Palestinians.

Bush encouraged the Israelis to build the walls on the West Bank that have inflamed Palestinian opinion. His administration urged Israel to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, which backfired on the Israelis and strengthened the militants. Then he insisted on early Palestinian elections, over Israeli and Palestinian objections. Hamas won, making everyone less safe.

Bush even interfered in the Iranian election, recording a plea, translated into Farsi and broadcast by satellite throughout Iran, asking supporters of democracy to boycott the election. Thanks to the boycott, Mahmoud Ahamadinejad was elected president.

Then there's Iraq. ``The government of Saddam used to protect us,'' Father Raymond Moussalli, a Chaldean Christian vicar now living in Jordan, told Newsweek. ``Mr. Bush doesn't protect us. The Shia don't protect us. No Christian was persecuted under Saddam for being Christian.''

Some argue that fundamentalist Christians welcome, even encourage, chaos in the Middle East as a means of making Biblical prophesies come true. I tend to blame incompetence, not conspiracy, for the mistakes of presidents. Bush didn't set the fires Christians are fleeing in the Middle East, but his actions fanned the flames.

Whatever his intent, the Christian exodus from the Middle East is a tragic part of George W. Bush's sad legacy, one that will haunt the Holy Land for many years to come.

Rick Holmes is opinion editor for the MetroWest Daily News (Framingham, Mass.). He can be reached at rholmes@cnc.com.

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